La La La La

Once upon a time, back in our pre-child days, Kathy and I used to listen to this thing called "music". And when a band got mentioned on the radio or in a magazine or something, I used to actually know who the heck they were talking about. In fact, I used to spend hours on iTunes downloading music and burning stuff on to mix CDs which I would listen to in my copious amounts of this odd thing called "free time".

I guess you could say that we still listen to music, if by "music" you mean exclusively the CD from the Music Together class that we take Leah and Riley to on Saturdays. Yep, those girls sure do like that CD, and who could blame them? It's chock full of timeless gems like "My Ball is Big and Round" and "Whoever Takes Care of You Comes Back (Because They Do Love You)", sung by some very perky-sounding folks. The girls like it so much that it's become the go-to CD for those situations when one of the girls inexplicably goes into a snit and we want to snap them out of it. Which means that we play it one or two times a day, every day. Every. Single. Day.

Even when the CD is not actually playing on our stereo, it's playing in my head on endless repeat, over and over and over. Right now for example, the CD in my head is playing Track 3, which is "Clap, Clap, Clap Your Hands". That's one of the good ones, actually. Don't get me started on Track 5, which is "She Sells Seashells (By the Seashore)". Trust me, you don't want to hear about it. I hear that song in my nightmares.

And if that sounds bad, believe me, it gets worse. I don't know if you've ever had a two-second song snippet from a kid's toy stuck in your head, but it's, um, not very fun. Yesterday, the words "Spin, spin, a letter!" repeated in my head about 493 times over the course of about three hours. I'd better stop talking about it now or else it's going to become wedged in my head again, and I just don't know if I can go through that again.

The good side of all this is that Leah and Riley are becoming more and more musical, which is cool to see. They'll now actually clap in pretty good time to the music, or bounce around in a way that bears a passing resemblance to dancing. Or at least as much a resemblance as what mommy and daddy call dancing.

And then on Sunday, we were in the car driving home and out of nowhere, Riley started singing a spontaneously made-up musical composition. It wasn't bad, actually. The melody was kind of a cross between Frere Jacques and the Jeopardy theme song. The lyrics went a little something like this:

Ah wah DEE Tah
Ah wah DEE Tah
Ah wah DEE Tah
(repeat about 15 more times)

So maybe it was a little repetitive, but I think she was going for a radio-friendly kinda vibe. I found it pretty darn catchy myself, especially when compared to that She Sells Seashells song.

And when we got home, Leah picked up the kazoo and had a good ol' time playing it for about 15 minutes. Or I should say, she had a good ol' time until Riley started trying to grab her kazoo, at which time Leah started whining and crying. This normally would be a bummer, but in this particular case she was whining and crying with the kazoo still in her mouth, which as it turns out sounds pretty freaking funny. Sorry Leah, it's hard to take any sound seriously when you hear it through a kazoo.